If you want a taste of what soldiers, heroes and pioneers looked like in almost any period of history — from well-traveled eras like the American Civil War, World War II and the Crusades to such obscure ones as the English Civil War, the Boer War and, the Boxer Rebellion — you probably can find some collectible toys and miniature soldiers from that era.

But don't count on that taste being very authentic, experts Don Pielin and Steve Sommers warned during a program about military miniatures at the Elgin History Museum.

Pielin, of Streamwood, and Sommers, of Oak Park, both are retired teachers who said they have been fascinated by these metal, wood, paper and plastic toys for years. In 1976 they founded a magazine about the hobby called Old Time Soldiers.

Four years ago Pielin and nine other members of the Military Miniatures Society of Illinois built the diorama showing Kane County's troops in the Civil War Battle of Shiloh that is displayed on the museum's first floor.

Pielin and Sommers said one thing that made toy makers sloppy about history was the desire to make one basic design fill multiple roles. Showing a "Fort Dearborn" model marketed to people at the 1933 world's fair in Chicago, Sommers said it was basically the same log fort used in the company's Western scenes under various other names, and it probably looked nothing like the original fort near the mouth of the Chicago River.

Whenever any war was dominating the headlines, young boys wanted to imagine the adventure of being there. When the Balkan Wars between a half-dozen southeastern-European countries seized the spotlight just before World War I, one toy maker used virtually the same soldier figure for all the troops, simply painting each one's uniform in different colors to show whether he was supposed to be Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian or whatever.

Going further back into the past, the speakers said, manufacturers were even more cavalier about making sure nothing like the truth got in the way of an exciting-looking character.

"Toy soldiers are one reason we grew up thinking the Vikings wore horns on their helmets," Pielin said. And a set of figures showing Scottish soldiers defending against African natives has the Scots wearing kilts and red coats when they probably wore a more boring tan uniform, the experts said.

"We have to deal with Robin Hood and Richard the Lion-Hearted and knights in a whole lot of periods because no one kept them straight," Pielin said. And showing cavemen living right alongside dinosaurs was the norm for hundreds of years of toys, he said.

"Europeans tended to be a lot more comfortable showing death and wounds than we did in America," Pielin said. "Some American figures show soldiers with bandaged wounds. But European ones even showed soldiers carrying heads stuck on a pole."

Another set, made in Denmark, shows a British monk with a sword about to smash the skull of a Viking who's blowing a trumpet. "I call that set The Music Critic," Sommers joked.

Pielin wrote a book about J. Edward Jones, a Chicago manufacturer who set out to use toy soldiers to educate children about all of American history, which in his mind had begun with the Norman invasion of England in 1066. He said the painting of these figures was done by women working at home for one-quarter cent per soldier — and they had to buy their own paint and brushes.

In 1931, Pielin said, Jones began making figures of Father Time, a bearded old man carrying an hourglass. Since Elgin National Watch Co. used Father Time as a symbol, and a sign with the figure was visible along Lake Street in downtown Chicago in Johnson's era, Pielin believes Johnson intended to hatch a deal with the watch company to sell or give away Father Times at the upcoming 1933 Chicago Century of Progress world's fair.

But unfortunately, Johnson's company went bankrupt in 1932.

Pielin said lead was the most common material for molded troops for many years, but was banned for toys because of health fears in Britain in 1955 and was largely replaced in the United States by plastic in the 1960s because plastic was cheaper. Lead also was heavy and expensive to ship, so the invention of a process to make molded lead soldiers hollow inside in the1890s made such figures much more affordable, he said.

Besides retelling history, the hobby has been affected by history, the experts said. Aluminum castings for things like manger scenes became popular for awhile after World War II, when much scrap aluminum became available in places like England and France. Many craftsmen fled from the ruins of Nazi Germany to Argentina and started making their fake warriors there. Many model warplanes and tanks that had been used by the armed forces to train soldiers in identifying friendly and enemy forces also came onto the market and are still collector's items.

Anyone who wants to see 350 booths full of such soldiers can attend the OTSN Toy Soldier Show, from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 27 at the Hyatt Regency Woodfield Hotel, at 1800 E. Golf Road in Schaumburg. For information, visit toysoldiershow.com.